Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of a new book, "Claws of the Panda: Beijing's Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada" and a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail. In this episode, he talks about the ongoing inquiry into China's interference in Canadian politics, and why he thinks the government is ignoring it.
00:06:11.560But, you know, looking at it then and looking at it now, it was absolutely accurate.
00:06:16.540Now, it had a few sort of technical flaws, nothing very much.
00:06:20.660But, you know, as you say, that was back in the 1990s.
00:06:23.640And also in the 1990s, there was one of the first public papers by a CSIS analyst, Holly Porteous, her name was.
00:06:36.440And she wrote a paper looking at the way the Chinese Communist Party's main political warfare organization, the United Front Work Department, had been used in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong.
00:06:52.600And then she went on from that to set out how the United Front would be used in Canada.
00:06:59.100And she anticipated that the handover of Hong Kong, China would turn its attention even more fully on Canada than it had been until then.
00:07:10.480And it was already, you know, the level of infiltration at that point was very high in Canada, in business, in academia, in politics.
00:07:20.640So, and that was a public paper back in the early, in the mid, late 1990s.
00:07:26.560So, you know, the CSIS has been banging this drum since it was founded in the mid-1980s.
00:07:39.860The problem is, as you point out, political will.
00:07:45.320And what we do not have in this country yet, unlike Australia, unlike the United States, which are also being infiltrated very heavily by the Chinese Communist Party,
00:07:55.360what we do not have is political will to do anything about it.
00:07:59.760We have all the tools that we need, but we do not have political will.
00:08:04.020So, when I speak to Canadians who don't follow politics closely, often you'll get people who just roll their eyes and say,
00:08:14.740well, why would China be interested in us?
00:08:32.180Because people simply don't believe it.
00:08:35.680Well, I tell you, well, the answer is very easy.
00:08:38.660It began in China in the 1940s when the Chinese Communist Party first became aware in any serious way of Canadian missionaries, Canadian diplomats.
00:08:50.300And they realized that these guys represented an open window into North America.
00:08:57.100If you couldn't play with the Americans, which was very difficult for the Chinese Communist Party at that time,
00:09:03.720the Americans were very, very suspicious.
00:09:06.140But Canada was the window into North America.
00:09:09.980And the premier of the time, Zhou Enlai, a very charming man, a very subtle man, he realized also that Canada's sort of ambiguous relationship and attitude towards the Americans could be used.
00:09:31.400You know, we are both envious and also feel rather superior to Americans at the same time.
00:09:37.920And he realized that this presented a huge opportunity.
00:09:42.100And so, he put a lot of emphasis on establishing relations with Canadians he found in China.
00:09:51.440And then in the early 1960s, he dispatched a really very important figure, Paul Lin.
00:09:59.320He was a committed Chinese nationalist.
00:10:02.460And in 1949, when the Communists took over in China, he took his family to China, became a very significant player.
00:10:10.940And in 1962, Zhou Enlai dispatched him back to Canada to set up the network of agents of influence.
00:10:26.260He set up East Asian center at McGill University.
00:10:30.640And at the same time, he fostered links to the Canadian business world through and helped set up the Canada-China Business Council,
00:10:42.540which remains absolutely fundamental body for Chinese influence in Canada.
00:10:48.280He set up links through academia and exchange of students, which allowed Chinese scientists to come to Canadian universities and pinch Canadian technology,
00:11:02.260which is still, in my view, one of the most important aspects that is not being looked at really very closely enough.
00:11:09.260It's interesting that you said McGill University in Montreal, because it was about 20, 25 years ago, I was working as a reporter in Montreal.
00:11:20.040And I just noticed that there was an obsession among the political class with China.
00:11:26.800And so many of them would retire from politics and get a job somehow related to China or visit China.
00:11:38.860You know, I hadn't worked across the country at that point, but I could definitely say I had not seen that in Ontario.
00:11:43.420And the Montreal business and political class were absolutely fascinated, mesmerized by China.
00:11:51.760Well, the link on that is the Power Corporation and the Desmarais.
00:11:57.900They were instrumental in the formation of the Canada-China Business Council.
00:12:04.960Paul Desmarais was the first president of the Canada-China Business Council.
00:12:08.760His son, Andre Desmarais, followed him.
00:12:13.640And the Power Corporation remains the hub of the Canada-China Business Council.
00:12:21.280Now, through that link, we have had four prime ministers who have worked for the Power Corporation and therefore been central to the Canada-China Business Council.
00:12:37.340All of them, all of them have been, I mean, that's elite capture on a grand scale for Beijing.
00:12:44.480So, but when you say elite capture, do you believe that they had Canada's best interests at heart, China's best interests?
00:12:56.780Were they being influenced directly or indirectly?
00:12:59.640No, I think they were, I mean, if we're talking about those four prime ministers, they all believed or were led to believe that China and business with China, relations with China was a huge opportunity for Canada.
00:13:19.720I mean, if you look at the figures that come out of Ottawa and come out of various Canadian institutions these days, they tell a full story about the relationship with China and the potential of that relationship.
00:13:36.440We can come back in a moment to what the Huawei affair showed, but let's just let's just take some of those those figures.
00:13:44.660You know, we are told, for example, that China is our second largest trading partner after the United States.
00:13:50.580And that gets repeated, repeated, repeated, it is not true.
00:13:55.980The European Union is our second largest trading partner.
00:14:00.300And by a long chalk, we sell four times, three to four times more to the European Union than we sell to China.
00:14:08.360We sell about around 5% of our exports go to China every year, five to seven, it varies a bit.
00:14:16.760A couple of years ago, the Economist magazine, which has a very good research arm called the Intelligence Unit, they did a global ranking of countries based on the importance to their economies of their exports to China.
00:15:05.200You'll remember after the Huawei affair got going.
00:15:07.780Well, apart from kidnapping the two Michaels, China imposed what in fact were were economic sanctions on Canada and stopped importing grains and meats, including pork.
00:15:22.320Now, some Canadian producers went squirrelly because they said, oh, China is the largest market for for Canadian pork, largest export market for Canadian pork.
00:16:20.800But that's the way figures get distorted.
00:16:23.280I mean, I try to avoid using and in the book I've tried always to try and avoid using figures from Canadian sources on China because they can't be trusted.
00:16:34.360Most of the figures I use are World Bank or OECD or Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development numbers because they're far more trustworthy.
00:16:43.720The notion that we have this special relationship with China has been inculcated into the whole of our official business and academic life.
00:16:59.880So you said at the beginning that part of why Paul Lin wanted to come here was kind of a foothold into North America to get at the the Americans, not necessarily the American market.
00:17:17.920Although we saw that during this was one of our trade disputes with the Trump administration.
00:17:24.680I had to agree with the Trump administration.
00:17:26.680They were angry over Chinese steel being dumped into the American market because they would send it to Canada.
00:17:36.100We'd polish it once with a little cloth, ship it down to them, claim it was Canadian.
00:17:41.120And and they said, well, wait a minute.
00:17:44.020They warned us for, I think, 18 months.
00:17:58.100At that time, Paul Lin became known to the Americans as a very dependable mailbox if you wanted to to send letters to Beijing and if you wanted to get replies.
00:18:08.680He actually I mean, he was living in Montreal, obviously, as a professor at McGill.
00:18:13.920But he had in his house and I found this in a in a an FBI secret report on him.
00:18:23.260They he had in his house a telephone which was direct linked to the switchboard in the Chinese embassy in Ottawa.
00:18:31.900So he was, you know, he was that closely linked to everything.
00:18:36.440And I found a lot of documents from American businessmen who were trying to get into China ahead of of of diplomatic relations being established.
00:18:50.460And and Paul Lin was the route they took.
00:18:53.400So that that was then that was 1969, 70, 71.
00:19:36.640I mean, you know, the there's still a huge despite the Huawei affair and despite the kidnapping of the two Michaels and all the horrors that were entailed in that.
00:19:45.860There there are still a lot of officials and politicians in in all levels of Canadian government and say, oh, well, you know, we have to keep contact.
00:19:58.280We have to maintain relations, so on and so forth.
00:20:04.460I mean, I think the lesson of the of the Huawei of that you cannot have a reasonable, rational relationship with a regime whose first instinct, first instinct when there's a problem is to take hostages.
00:20:18.460I mean, that just speaks of a cultural cultural gulf, which is unbridgeable for us.
00:20:26.940However, the current government sees things differently.
00:20:29.760And our foreign minister, Melanie Jolie, has just dispatched her deputy minister, David Morrison, who is one of these people who apparently fails upwards, as they often do in Ottawa.
00:20:42.940He was the national security and intelligence advisor for a hot second during all of this, wrote a report that detailed some problems with Chinese election interference, which the prime minister says he didn't read.
00:20:56.380He missed some of the things that were happening.
00:21:00.880We know all of this due to the inquiry.
00:21:03.640And yet he's the deputy minister of foreign affairs and has now been sent over by Jolie.
00:21:08.480She she sends him on a mission to patch things over with China.
00:21:13.040Does that make any sense to you, Jonathan?
00:21:39.620Now, Hong Kong is a Canadian city, for heaven's sake.
00:21:42.340Well, the Canadians are the largest minority in Hong Kong.
00:21:45.100And yet, OK, we made a bit of a noise about it when the when the this new national security law was was imposed and they started locking up all the the the pro reform pro political reform activists.
00:22:01.820And but basically, we've done nothing.
00:22:04.560And equally, you know, this this is something else that gets my goat.
00:22:13.920And this is unusual for the U.N. because China has a huge influence there.
00:22:18.380We have U.N. reports saying that China uses slave labor in Xinjiang in in in in its production facilities.
00:22:27.980Now, you know, we quite rightly, quite rightly get very upset about the slavery in in Canada and in North America, you know, over the previous 200 years.
00:22:42.880And yet we're happily, happily buying junk from China today made by slave labor.
00:22:49.780I mean, I find this I find this incomprehensible.
00:22:53.580And a major consulting firm that may have connections to the government once headed by a Canadian held a conference right near one of those camps.
00:23:05.140Jonathan, we've we've got to take a break.
00:23:07.280But when we come back, I want to talk about the the business capture and how that relates to the influence on politicians, because I've got an example from a few years ago that I want to bring up.
00:23:20.200And I think it still holds true today.
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00:26:21.160He waited outside the restroom to talk to the Chinese leader and say, we want our citizen back.
00:26:26.760The response from the Canadian media, especially driven by the business media and the business culture in this country was, how dare he do that to a Chinese leader?
00:26:39.760And why are we putting our business relations at risk for this guy we don't even know?
00:26:49.460It's like, you know, claiming I am a Roman.
00:26:52.440Well, well, then you get the rights of citizenship.
00:26:56.820Harper kept his hard line on China for a while until he realized he's just getting beaten up every day by the business culture in this country.
00:27:09.240I've already mentioned the Power Corporation and the Canada-China Business Council.
00:27:13.120If you look at who the founding companies were in the Canada-China Business Council, it's the elite of Canadian business.
00:27:25.380It's all the banks, the insurance companies, the investment companies, and major manufacturing companies who moved their manufacturing to China.
00:27:34.940Now, all those big boys, they got sweetheart deals from the Chinese Communist Party early on.
00:27:48.540And these, of course, are the companies that can get ministers on the phone.
00:27:55.760They are the companies that arrange donations to political parties and all this sort of thing.
00:28:03.100They have influence and they use that influence.
00:28:07.740If you look at what happened after the two Michaels were kidnapped, a lot of the pressure to try and resolve this and to free Meng Wanzhou came from the business community.
00:28:59.240You know, I'm highly critical of the Trudeau government, as most people know.
00:29:03.780But I had to give them credit, and I did consistently, for not releasing Meng Wanzhou throughout that entire ordeal.
00:29:12.540That would have sent exactly the wrong signal.
00:29:16.100And to this day, I give him credit for that.
00:29:20.740You know, I still think that overall, I believe the prime minister has a soft spot for China.
00:29:28.320And I'm not just talking about his offhand comment years ago about how he admires their basic dictatorship and allows them to turn green on a dime.
00:29:37.560Although I do believe he fundamentally holds that view.
00:29:42.580But is there something – does it go beyond naivete for him?
00:29:48.480Because there's a longstanding relationship with China and his family.
00:29:52.960His father, even before he entered politics, had traveled through China, back when it was very difficult for Westerners to travel through China.
00:30:01.940Do you think that the Trudeau family just has this vision that China is the future?
00:30:07.860And I don't think that's an idea that's unique to them.
00:30:11.780But do you think that there is a family connection to this, the way that the current prime minister and current government holds and views China?
00:30:23.540But I think if you look at why Meng Wanzhou was not released, I think it's – it'd be nice to say, well, you know, Justin Trudeau stood up for the rule of law.
00:30:35.560I don't think that's what happened at all.
00:30:37.860If you look at – and I deal with this in the new chapters – if you look at the situation that Canada was in there,
00:30:44.580we were stuck between China and the U.S., and we had to decide whose team we were on.
00:30:53.500And with Trump in the White House, there was absolutely no doubt whose team we had to be on.
00:31:01.460You know, in terms – I mean, I've already talked a bit about our trade relationship.
00:31:05.820Yeah, the U.S. is by far our most important relationship from any perspective, and not least of trade.
00:31:16.120And, you know, Trump had already shown that he was prepared to play hardball on the trade side.
00:31:22.600We had absolutely no choice from a very crude point of view of self-interest but to do it the way Washington wanted it played on that thing.
00:31:34.000And, you know, it meant putting Canadians at risk, sure.
00:32:17.440So is China part of the future, though?
00:32:21.300Do these business elites, the politicians that do this – maybe we should downplay the politicians because, you know, once they retire, they all run off and get a job as a lobbyist for China, and that's cross-party lines.
00:32:36.720But in terms of the business council that you're talking about and the business elites, and they view China as the future, you seem skeptical of that.
00:32:48.620I think they're turning away from that.
00:32:50.260I mean, I've seen some internal papers and talked to people in the power corporation, which, as I've said, is the moving force behind the Canada-China Business Council.
00:33:01.820And they, a few years ago, began to turn away from China quite significantly and turn towards Europe.
00:33:09.760China has some really serious internal structural economic problems, not least of which is that the Chinese Communist Party will not countenance any kind of political reform.
00:33:26.440In fact, it is now by far, by far, the most technologically sophisticated totalitarian state the world has ever seen.
00:34:35.840We should never have got involved in it to begin with.
00:34:37.820I mean, it was quite clearly a propaganda operation to start with.
00:34:43.020And, and the, the accounting and the accounting rules and regulations were abysmal.
00:34:49.420I mean, it was, it was, it was clearly a, a, a, a, a, a briber's, you know, bank.
00:34:58.080It was, it was designed entirely to, to, to capture, the elite capture in Africa and Asia.
00:35:06.100And, and that's, that's what it's proved.
00:35:07.960No, we should never have got involved in that to begin with.
00:35:09.840Before we get into the, the academic side and why we need to be worried about that, you know, China is also politically aligning with Russia, with Iran.
00:35:24.400This is the new axis of evil, if you will, that is, is sowing chaos around the world.
00:35:33.360I mean, I don't, I don't understand why the, the, the self-delusion slides in Ottawa and in other places amongst politicians and officials that somehow there is a, there is a, a, a, a, a residual friendship between our regimes, between our government.
00:35:55.700The Chinese Communist Party saw us as useful idiots and they've milked it for all it's worth.
00:36:03.360But, you know, just a, an interesting aside on the, how effective they can be at changing people's views or changing language, changing narrative.
00:36:17.640The current iteration of the Conservative Party.
00:36:20.480So under Aaron O'Toole, they took a hard line.
00:36:23.640They believe they lost votes and seats over that.
00:36:27.300Aaron O'Toole testified at the inquiry, believes they lost nine seats.
00:36:31.020But the current Conservative leader doesn't talk about China.
00:36:36.320And, and he, he's constantly trying to make that, that differentiation that it's the government.
00:36:41.780And, and I don't think it's because he's trying to be politically correct.
00:36:44.740He doesn't want to lose the votes in the next election.
00:36:46.880He doesn't want to give Beijing any reason to tell the Chinese diaspora community through their very Beijing-controlled social, Chinese-language social media,
00:37:00.360But it, it, it, it is interesting how it changes the language.
00:37:04.540So I, I wonder how it changes the research, the language, the, what is produced in our academic institutions when Beijing is so heavy.
00:37:15.900You know, there's a lot of talks since October 7th and the attack on Israel by Hamas and the fact that they were funded by Qatar about how much money has gone into American institutions from Qatar.
00:37:30.440Here we've had China for years doing this.
00:37:33.660There were attempts to at least get Huawei out of some of this because there was a feeling that Huawei was just stealing intellectual property.
00:37:44.920How big of an issue was this and has it been curtailed at all?
00:37:52.360This started at the very beginning after diplomatic relations were established in 1970 and we started having student exchanges.
00:37:59.860And I, in the first edition of the book, I mean, I've got a lot of figures on that.
00:38:05.360The, the, when, when China started sending students over here, they all went and did technical subjects.
00:38:13.200And Canada applauded this because they thought it would be a nice, you know, part of, of China's remodeling, reestablishment of its economy and the construction of its economy.
00:38:25.640You know, the, the, the Canadians who went to China were all Maoists who went to study the, you know, the cultural revolution and so on and so on and, and continue to be, you know, and I mean, they were known as Paul Lin's Maoists.
00:38:39.980Yeah, they were, so, and that has continued and the infiltration of Canadian universities by the Chinese Communist Party has become more and more sophisticated over the years.
00:38:54.040To the extent, of course, that they actually have spy, spy operations in most of the universities where, where there are Chinese students.
00:39:06.360The, what has happened most recently is that the, with the, the modernization of the People's Liberation Army, the, the, the, the Chinese military, they have been off stealing military technology wherever they can find it.
00:39:22.140And Canada is one of the major destinations that they, the, the, the People's Liberation Army scientists come to, to either steal or develop with Canadian help military technology.
00:39:49.460I, you know, it's in there, but, you know, one of the big universities that are targeted by the People's Liberation Army scientists, who, who, by the way, all cover their backgrounds, so it's very hard to identify them as PLA, is Waterloo is one of the big ones.
00:40:07.740It's, it's, it, it, it, it ranks amongst one of the top universities in the world as a destination for, for People's Liberation Army scientists.
00:40:15.800But there's also McGill, the University of Toronto, Western, UBC.
00:40:24.080I, I, I am sitting right now just steps from the University of Toronto campus.
00:40:30.840I live downtown, um, and the, the, the change in population, uh, when the school season starts, it's massive Chinese, uh, foreign students coming in.
00:40:44.020Uh, and it has been for the, the entire time I, I, I've lived here, um, are, are, are most of those students, do you think, uh, you know, is, is, is it beyond sending people over to steal technical secrets now?
00:40:58.300I mean, there's thousands and thousands of them just here at U of T.
00:41:01.220Well, and of course, to remember, these, uh, students, uh, are no longer the largest contingent in Canadian universities.
00:41:09.680Um, but I mean, if you have, you have to go back about 20, 30 years on this, when, um, various levels of government, um, shrank away from, um, funding, uh, um, uh, necessary assets at Canadian universities.
00:41:28.640And they said to the Canadian universities, just take in more foreign students, charge them three or four times what you'd charge, um, uh, uh, domestic students, um, and use the money for all these, uh, you know, extra halls and assets that you want to build.
00:41:44.080Um, and of course, at the same time, um, Canada has quietly and without really any public discussion made foreign students an essential part of our immigration policy.
00:41:58.640Because they all get, um, the, the opportunity for, um, for, um, permanent residency.
00:42:06.640Um, which it's the Canadian experience program.
00:42:11.100I mean, I remember in South Africa, uh, around the time of the end of the apartheid, Canada advertising in the local newspapers there for South African doctors.
00:42:23.980We robbed South Africa of every ruddy doctor we can get on the planes.
00:42:28.740And I think that this pillaging of the brightest and best from developing countries is quite frankly immoral.
00:42:36.400Um, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, okay, we get good standard of educated, of educated, uh, young immigrants.
00:42:44.900But, uh, but at the same time, we robbing their countries of, of intellectual assets, which their countries need.
00:42:53.000I, I find it quite disgusting myself, but, but I, I, I'm surprised that there isn't more public discussion and public questioning of this use of, of, uh, the foreign students as an essential part of our immigration policy.
00:43:06.260Uh, it's bizarre and an essential part of keeping the, uh, the universities open.
00:43:11.320Uh, give us a quick, uh, plug for your book, uh, Jonathan.
00:43:14.640Uh, so, you know, I've got the 2019 edition, but the 2024 edition comes out.
00:43:29.920Uh, it's, uh, uh, no, it's, uh, it's five new chapters.
00:43:35.700It, it shows an absolutely radical change in Canada's attitude towards China, at least amongst ordinary Canadians.
00:43:45.140The, you know, the, the polls show that, uh, that, uh, while the, uh, Canadians as a whole had a pretty, uh, uh, benign view of, of, um, of, uh, the People's Republic of China up to the moment when Meng Wanzhou was detained.
00:43:59.120And then the two Michaels were kidnapped, uh, Canadian public opinion has turned dramatically, uh, against, uh, the People's Republic of China since then.
00:44:08.360And, and, and maintains that, that position.
00:44:12.600I mean, we, uh, uh, the, the politicians are, uh, uh, uh, they're not even running to catch up.
00:44:20.100They are so far removed from the, the, uh, the attitude of, of, uh, of, of the bulk of Canadians towards the regime in Beijing.
00:44:35.660Uh, in the United States, it used to be a bipartisan consensus that China was the future.
00:44:41.280It was Bill Clinton that brought the China into the World Trade Organization.
00:44:45.460Um, George W. Bush kept, you know, relations going, wanted to expand them.
00:44:51.020Uh, and, and now it's a bipartisan, bipartisan consensus that China is a very much a problem for Western democracies, for the health of the economy.
00:45:04.580We've got one party saying it's a problem, and we've got three others, four if you count the Greens, but, you know, there's only two of them, um, saying, oh, no, oh, no, China is still the future.
00:45:17.700Why are our politicians so far behind the public?
00:45:20.260Well, I mean, I, we are not very good at bipartisan, um, approaches.
00:45:26.740I mean, I, a huge contrast with Australia on this.
00:45:29.740Australia manages to have a bipartisan foreign policy, bipartisan defense policy.
00:45:36.660We have a situation where as soon as you get a change of government, the first thing they do is cancel all the defense contracts that, uh, were, were, uh, introduced by the previous government.
00:45:46.200Um, and, uh, and there's no consensus on foreign policy.
00:45:50.660I mean, I, I had hoped that, that, you know, that the, the rigors of, of COVID-19 would lead to a reassessment of our national interests and, um, our national security.
00:47:02.640Kevin Libin is the executive producer.
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